I always sit in on these classhes, even though I am
only enrolled in the Petting Zoo because that’s all my cyber-parents can
afford, and I’m still not old enough for a very high school. But I am highly
pre-psychosis, and understand everything the teacher says!
And I have a secret tape recorder I found in a box of
flakes. This should explain what follows, maybe, maybe not………………
Within
the hollowed and hallowed walls of Roma Ryan’s High School and Petting Zoo,
somewhere wet in Ireland, the Principal, the kindly but eccentric Mother
Superioriosa, looks down happily at her desk. There lies the signed and sealed
contract of a new teacher, Sister Windy, a native of Windypeg, Canada. Mother
Superioriosa smiles in relief: she was afraid that she herself might have to
teach "Roma Ryan 101" in Room 102, at 103 in the afternoon, but now -
well -she can go play with her pet llama, Perulla Clack.
Meanwhile,
in Room 102:
“Good
afternoon, my dear studnuts. I am Sister Windy, and I am delirious to bring you
this new course: "Understanding and Appreciating the Lyrics of Roma
Ryan," generously refunded by OnlyTimex Watches, on sale everyday in the
Coffeeteria downstairs.
I
would like to begin by saying what a lovely girl Enya was when I taught her
piano at the Donegal Boarding School for Girls Fleeing a Very Large Family
(DBSFGFAVLF). Of course, one can't teach a piano much, but at least I tried.
Enya
was very quiet, I think mainly because, coming from such a large family, she
had never heard the sounds of silence before. Of course, she was also very
intelligent! Whenever I asked her a question, she always knew the answer, but,
curiously, prefaced it with a long series of "dum dum dum dums." I
then had to teach her Latin, so that she would realize that the plural of
"dum" was "da", not "dums." She then correctly
switched to "da da da da" before every question. I was ever so proud!
Now,
Enya herself did not do much with lyrics - she preferred bowling with Rosie,
actually - so I introduced her to my Irish Idle, Roma Shane Ryan. Roma and I
were, in our traditional habits, shooting pool and having a Guinness or two
together every week or so, and one night I inculcated her all about the little "dum
dum" girl from Donegal. She was enrapturated, and so I arranged a meeting.
And thereby the course of musical history was changed forever. Now, aren't I
just serendipitous? (That was a rhetorical question, Miss Spoken, you can put
your dictionary away, away, away.)
And so I would now like to expunge my entire teaching
career in explicating Roma's lyrics, written for Enya, who dedicated all her
songs to me in gratitude for all the "da da da" I taught her, but
somehow forgot to give me a cut of the royalties - well, I did once cut
Camilla, but I'd rather not go there right now, Badmorals, that is. Such a
lovely castle though - I must tell Enya about it. Scotland is so lovely for two
weeks in July. But I digress…
I
shall begin, accordianly, with a lesion on the lyrics to the beloved Orinoco
Flow, but first I must sail away into my private little back room here to
find some Guin....water to help me speak moistly and expeditiously to you all.
Be right back, classh!
(“My,
my, time flies,” says the little girl at the back of the room.)
There!
Now, studnuts, are we all ready to begin our lesion? Good!
We
shall begin with the beginning because I am a linear thinker after all. I have
tried thinking out of the box, but they keep pushing me back in. Who, you ask,
is "they," Miss TreedCat - why, those invisible aliens who inhabit
the bodies of forum-people. I see forum-people everywhere, that's what I told
Bruce Willies once.
In
the beginning, Roma said:
Let
me sail, let me sail
Now,
classh, this is a noseworthy example of the literary device called
"repetitio." To reinforce one's theme, one repeats it (as I fear I
shall have to do many times after eating a garlic-pepper sandwich for lunch).
Anyway, we must first ask who, or what, is sailing?
One
would think it to be a person, but it might be a talking ship, or even the
Ghost of Gilligan's Ireland, so let us, for the time being, refer to it as a
"persona," and hope it doesn't mind. This persona wants to sail, and
evacuates the following command:
Ah
ha! The writer has fooled us! We imagined a big sailing ship at sea, the waves
pounding against it, like my head feels after Saturday evening bowling with
Roma. But no, we are transported, instantly (as in "Beam us up,
Scotty") to the Orinoco River. Now, this river is NOT famous for carrying
large sailing ships, so we must ask if the captain is lost. Ah, the famous
"lost captain" motif: "O captain, my captain"…Yes, many a
captain lost has been found, thanks to our beloved field tripe guide, Amazing
Grace.
Then
we are impregnated with:
Now,
Roma, rogue that she is, surprises us once again: she only wants to reach so
that she may beach! Now we realize, in profound astonishment, that our persona
is either a beach bunny in search of sun and tans, OR a whale with a really bad
sense of direction!
What
next, you dare to ask?
Oh
my! We are once again instantly transported, this time to Tripoli. Now that IS
fast sailing! But why, you ask? Of course you do, Miss Rhine 2004. Well, you
see, the sun is brighter and the tans are darker near Tripoli than near the
Orinoco. Or, perhaps our poor-pilot whale is even more spatially challenged
than we had imagined!
Let
us continue on:
Aha!
"Repetitio" again, again, again, just in case you fell asleep during
the previous verses. I did indeed hear strange snoring sounds coming from the
back of the room, where, I now see, a little girl, perhaps 2 years old at most,
is sitting in play pen Box 5. She must have wandered in from the Petting Zoo
Annex, which is now having a recessive gene.
What
is your name, little one at the back of the room? OperaKait de Brennan et de
Poto? Well, welcome, Miss Pothole, and will you please stop throwing a tantrum
at Master Card? Thank you, dear!
In
any case, classh:
Oh
dear, Roma has pulled the proverbial rug out from under our dainty little feet!
The persona has a death wish!! No pleasant sail this, but a mad dash across the
globe in search of the final departure. Perhaps some antidepressants are
needed? Do whales take antidepressants? Or do they prefer talking with Dr.
Phil? So many questions, so little time!
Ah,
more of that ingenuous "repetitio"! Shall we repeat that? Good, now
all of you say "repetitio". Excellent! Now say it again. There, that
should now be imprinted on your remaining frontal lobes.
Far
beyond the Yellow Sea
Oh
dear, spatially challenged still, the persona suddenly beams up (using the beam
of the ship of course) to the Yellow Sea, which isn't really very yellow any
more due to global swarming. Note that the persona wishes to go BEYOND the
Yellow Sea. Now, what lurks there? Is there a better beach perhaps? Or, perhaps
some eligible sperm whales to play with?
Well,
dear classh, you can now see that Roma has left us totally puzzled by this
stanza; to fully understand her intent, we must sail on! But I must first take
a break now and go to the loo, or is it step to the loo, or skip to the loo? I
get confused sometimes…
(As Sister Windy exits, stage right, the little 2 year
old left at the back of the room says, ominously, "I am the walrus."
But the good Sister returns.)
Now,
boys and girls, are we all settled down? Excellent -- lettuce review:
In
the first stanza of "Orinoco Flow," Roma confuses us to no end or
porpoise: will the second stanza light up her life, or even perhaps ours? We
can only hope:
Aha,
Roma is giving us a geography lesson! Won't Brother National Geographicus
object at the next faculty brawl, er, meeting!! But, then, he is always so
objectionable.
So,
take out your atlases (no, Master Card, leave that big guy with the world on
his shoulders alone). As you can see, if you manage to open your eyes, Bissau
just happens to be the port and capital of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. So, we
now find ourselves far from the Yellow Sea indeed - we have sailed away all the
way to West Africa! You see, this is no common ship Roma has built: it is a
supersonic nautical vessel, the "Concourse".
Now
Palau is a country in the western Pacific Ocean (made up of 340 coral and
volcanic islands -most of which, wisely, allow no human cohabitation), so our
mystery ship has now sailed away, faster than the speed of light or sound, from
Africa to the Pacific, in the shade of Avalon
Well,
obviously, after such a high speed journey we need to rest in the shade, but
WHY the shade of Avalon? Does Roma harbour a visit from the Avalon Lady with
her case of obnoxious perfumes and overpriced cosmetics? Is she on the look out
for a King named Arthur? Or a singer named Frankie? Please write a 500 page
essay on this for our classh tomorrow.
And
so we must go on:
Well,
we all know that Fiji is a country in the South Pacific, don't we, Miss Guided?
Thus Roma obviously wants us to focus our puny imaginations on the Pacific,
intuiting that her message in the song is of a peaceful, pacifist nature.
Tiree,
however, places us in shock and awe, and also in need of instamatic
defibrillation! In literary terms this is called "weirdum
juxtapositionum." From Fiji in the peaceful Pacific to Tiree, an Ornery
island off Scotland the Brave. Now, we all know that the Scots are not pacific
or even specific, for that matter. So why are we there? Yes, King Davyd,
because it is indeed a land chalk full of Celts who know better than to get
themselves kilt. And there is always Badmorals Castle too.
As
for the Isles of Ebony, well, dear studnuts, this is a shameless plug for
Roma's beloved daughter Ebony, who, it seems, now has her own archipelago --
but where? And how much did it cost in euros? Ah, these are important questions
which we must struggle to answer, or, at least, guess at. I myself would love
to own my own archipelago, the Windy Islands, but, again, we must follow the
yellow mud brick road:
Now,
we all know where Peru is, don't we? "In the Petting Zoo," you say,
little OperaKait? Playing with Mother Superioriosa? Oh deer, I do hope your
recessive gene is almost over.
Anyway,
there is our ship--or spatially confused whale--BACK in the Pacific once again;
this is also "weirdum juxtapositionum." But it does indeed reveal
Roma's abiding (and perhaps Freudian) fixation with that particular ocean.
After all, it is indeed a very BIG ocean.
Now
Cebu is in the Philippines. All the way across the wide Pacific we have now
travelled, again so quickly we did not feel ourselves move! My, my, it leaves
me bad breathless! Let me just take a quick swig, er, drink of this special
harvest (1988) Blisterine. There, much better, so:
Hear
the power of Babylon
Well,
now we come to the crux of the matter! All these places are broadcasting the
many babels of Babylon! It is the power of the Babylon Broadcasting Corporation
(aka the BBC) that is ruling our lives and determining our journey. Thus Roma,
ever the unsocial activist, rails against the media in this powerful verse,
urging all of us to take arms against a sea of…Oh, my heart just throbs with
incitement!
Bali
High, everyone - didn't some of you flunk out of there? Nevermind, none of us
is perfect or even pluperfect. And only a few of us are in fact present.
Bali,
of course, is located in Indonesia - thus, once again the Pacific Ocean floods
Roma's mind, and we stand amazed, and rather wet as well.
Now
Cali, which so fortuitously rhymes with Bali that one almost thinks Roma
intended this, can be found in Colombia - where the coffee is high as an
elephant's eye -- just look on your maps, studnuts. See it? Good! Why are we
there now, though? We have yet again traversed the entire Pacific Ocean at the
speed of sound and with the sound of speed - oh dear, I think I need some
dramamine. Excuse me a moment....
There,
I feel much better.
Ah,
the stanza's outstanzalizing conclusion! Off the coast of Australia (not to be
confused with Austria, Miss Taken) we now dive beneath the Coral Sea, as if the
persona were indeed a whale! And what lies underneath the Coral Sea?
Directionally challenged Aussies? Off-course Kiwis? Perhaps the answer is,
simply, coral? Think about that for tomorrow, classh.
Well,
to sump up to this pointy point:
“If
Roma's first stanza left us in a tizzy,
her
second stanza will make us dizzy!!”
(@SW)
More
dramamine, please.....................
(Sister retreats to her private back room, and then
returns, carrying a very large bottle of pink stuff.)
Back
again, my dear studnuts! Isn't it amazing what a good dose of Pepto-Brennan ™
will do for anyone with mal de mer? Not that this is a commercial -- oh no, for
we are on the payroll of OnlyTimex Watches ™, as you should december.
Now,
back to our literary execration of "Orinoco Flow." We have seen,
haven't we, how Roma takes us back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, again
and again and again, and... um, excuse me, I think I need more Pepto-Brennan……
There now. Well, in the next stanza we will see what literary critics call
"el shockou" - that is, a deepening element of surprise! Here we go,
so hold on:
Oh
my, what an "el shockou" we have here! From East to West we turn
North and South. No longer going across, we are now going up and down, up and
down - I do need a wee bit more of this Pepto-Brennan. Not that I am
recommending this to anyone, off course.
Now,
we come to the poetic crux: our persona is now sailing between the Hebrides of
Scotland the Brave, all the way south into deepest Africa! Oh, what a very
Freudian journey, what excitement stirs my Jung heart!
Oh
yes, the Sea of Clouds IS very deep indeed; why, once Sister Ethereale fell
into it and only her Wings (and not Sir Paul, who was sealing some sort of
agreement at the time) kept her afloat. So Roma now takes us further along her
sentimental journey to the Yellow Mountains of China! Yunhai in Chinese!
Remember the Yellow Sea in stanza one? Good! This recollection of the first
stanza is known as "ringo-starr-compositio." Now, make sure you write
that down: ringo-star-compositio! Just drum it into your heads, dears.
The
moon! La Luna!!! Yo soy sauce!! Oh how brilliant, even with reflected light! We
move, ever so softly, from the heights of China to the depths of the moon. And
there are so many islands on the moon - who could count them all! Put your hand
down, King Davyd, that was a rhetorical question. But note that Roma only has
ONE island of the moon in mind here; which can it be? That, classh, is your
homework for next week.
Ah,
ringo-starr-compositio again rears its glorious and hairy head! We are back, on
the ship or with our hapless whale, indeed, the Prince of Whales, on the whaves
of the ocean. But, is it the ocean of the Earth or of the Moon? That is the
question!
Well,
of course, our persona wishes to go where no persona, not even William Shatner,
has gone before! The drive to explore, to go beyond, is deep within the human
psyche; we must go further into, into, into.... O my! My heart overflows with
excommunication.
Yes,
Miss Informed, that is indeed incremental "repetitio"! Very good, for
you…………..
Why
go somewhere familiar? Especially if you have an American Depressed credit
card. Our persona must go to lands it/she/he/whatever has never set eyes upon.
And note the cross-reference to the second line above this one!
"Been" versus "Seen:" a subtle, yet important philosophical
distinction is being drawn. Speaking of drawing, Miss Princess of Donegal,
please stop doodling on milk cartoons and pay attention!
Now,
classh, we can see that this stanza reinforces the message of the previous
stanza; this is called "emphasasio." We are now fully committed! That
is, I mean, committed to our personal voyage of self discovery! Isn't Roma
wonderful in conveying the deeply seated human urge to move on, to explore, to
find a raison d'etre among the bran flakes of Life?
Well,
I am so tired after all this excitement that I am going to the rest room for a
bit. Work on your assignments and please do not disturb Mr. Snorus, who, I see,
has fallen asleep once again.
(Tempus fugitted, again….)
Classh,
come to order! All of you, stop singing "turn it up, turn it up, turn it
up" and leave those Bunion Burners alone! Good, now we can finish our
analysis of "Orinoco Flow."
In
the final stanza we will see that Roma, devious as ever, leaves us with what is
known, in literary circles, which I go around in quite often... but I
digress...as "suspended inquisitio". Got that? Write it down clearly,
so I can see clearly now the rain is gone....I digress again, oh dear………there
must be something in the rain. Let us move on before it comes again:
We
can sail, we can sail (etc)....
Yes,
once again "repetitio" rules the day. Roma is so lymphatic about
sailing, but wait! El shockou again: it is now WE and not ME! Previously the
persona was singing in the first person singular, but now the embrace of Roma
expands to include us all! WE can sail, we can come along on this mystical,
magical mystery tour - brilliant segue, isn't it, studnuts?
I
do indeed hope that at least one of us can steer, but examine the
"juxtapositio" here: steer and near; of course, Roma wants us to
steer to a conclusion, to come near to the point of no return, no second
chances:
Oh
my, another el shockou! WE are not wanted to steer, rather one Rob whose last
name our secondary school computer will most likely censor as too photographic
for Mother Superioriosa's tender, unexposed ears! Now, do you remember "A
Tale of Two Cities?" Well, Rob is not that one, but his distant relative;
he is very distant now because he has, apparently, been steering this spatially
confused vessel all over the planet! If you feel sea sick, call Rob at 2 am, at
1888979768501.
Yes,
the song is sailing away unto its conclusion, as Roma so subtly indicates in
this verse. Saying goodbye often makes one sigh, now, doesn't it? So sad, the
long long journey out of nowhere must end, and we must all say our adio-o-os
goodbyes. My heart breaks at the thought! Has anyone seen the CrazyGlue?
Major,
Richter level 8.0 el shockou here: who is Ross, and what is he dependent on?
Does Roma speak of his children, or, more darkly, of his medicinal usage? Is
Ross a co-dependent persona himself? Well, THAT is your assignment for the next
psychology classh with Brother Psycho Tick.
We
can sail, we can sail....
"Conclusio
exposita" here: "repetetio" also - see how clever Roma is? Sail
on and sail on, beneath the silvery moon; you see, Roma's point is that the
journey of life cannot and does not conclude. Even if we reach and beach, our
memory will live on! Life is thus seen to be a meaningful long long journey,
snared in drums. We are all in the same boat as we sail away, sail away. And
so, classh, the song ends on a joyous note of the triumph of life over death,
akin to Beethoven's Ninth with its Ode to Toys! Brilliant, Roma, brilliant
indeed.
Miss
OperaKait, were you recording this lesion with that miniature Uphone I now see?
Well, then, stuff it right back with the flakes. My inciting lesions are all
protected by Coffee Right!
Well,
studnuts, I am afraid that my cardial palpitations are increasing and I must go
to the rest room for some more Pepto-Brennan. And, since the bell is about to
go Ding Dong anyway, I shall remiss all of you from my mind, er, from my room.
Till we meet again, ta ta - or is it tum tum????? “